Thieves in the Night (21 page)

In other words, they have ceased to be Jews and become Hebrew peasants.

This of course is exactly what our philosophy and propaganda aims at. To return to the Land, and within the Land to the soil; to cure that nervous over-strungness of exile and dispersion; to liquidate the racial inferiority complex and breed a healthy, normal, earthbound race of peasants. These Hebrew Tarzans are what we have bargained for. So why am I frightened of them?

Perhaps because of the eternally conflicting values of crea-tiveness and security. On one side the fever and the vision; on the other side the sluggish pulse of health. On one side of the scales persecution and otherness as spurs to spiritual achievement; hectic prophets and sick messiahs from Jesus to Marx and Freud. On the other side of the balance the price we had to pay for them; the smell of tons of burning flesh on the stakes of Spain; enough spilled blood to fill the Dead Sea; the stink and filth and claustrophobia of the ghetto; the deterioration of the hereditary substance through the survival of the nimblest, the humblest, the crookedest, into its final product, the flat-footed, shifty-eyed eternal tramp.

In Buchenwald they now hang people on hooks by their mouths, like carps. Who would not swap all the formulae of Einstein to take a single jerking wrench off his hook?

But who, having completed the transaction, would rejoice about it?

I almost forgot the episode which frightened me most. It was a story one of the young Tarzans told me with a grin when he saw me through the open door of my room working on Pepys. It was about a friend of his, born and educated in the Commune of Herod's Well. When that boy was thirteen, his father made him a gift of a fountain pen. When he was seventeen, he wrote a letter to his father which said: “Dear Daddy, to-day I have finished school. So I shall not need that pen any more and am sending it back to you.”

That was an extreme case. But it is no use denying that these young Tarzans are a step backward and that it will take a series of generations until we catch up again. It is a deliberate sacrifice but that does not make it less depressing. Rousseau was lucky that the French did not take him seriously; had they followed his advice and all become shepherds and tillers of the soil, he would have hanged himself.

Wednesday

The Commission appointed by the British Government to work out suggestions for the partitioning of the country has published its report. According to their recommendations the Jewish State should comprise less than one per cent of the total area of Palestine—a rectangle forty miles long and ten miles wide—excluding most of our settlements, excluding the whole of Galilee, the Valley of Jezreel, everything. It is not a political report but a printed sneer of derision.

Together with the report, the Government has issued a White Paper rejecting partition—though not on the grounds of the monstrosity of the proposed frontiers, but because of the “political and financial difficulties involved”. Instead,
there is to be a Round Table Conference to decide the future of the country—a Conference to which not only the two interested parties, but all the Arab States are to be invited. This is an innovation. I have never heard of Britain inviting Iraq and Syria to take part in their discussions with Egypt. It can only mean one thing: they are looking for an excuse to get rid of their obligations to us and to bury the idea of our National Home. Our future is under its debris.

Thursday

Simeon is in hospital in Haifa with typhoid. I wish he were back. The indifference of our people here towards the political situation drives me crazy; they do not even seem to realise that something is wrong. Most of them only read the headlines in the papers. In the evening everybody is tired and can't be bothered; it is the old, honest and disastrous attitude: “we are doing our job; leave the rest to the politicians”.

Last night there was a celebration; Judith, Moshe's wife and head of our laundry, has come back from the maternity hospital with twins—inmates number six and seven of the Children's House. There were sweet wine and cakes and the obvious jokes about Moshe's methods of rationalising production. As their room has just enough standing space for ten people we took turns to get in; Moshe stood at the door, sturdy like a prize bull, shaking everybody's hands with an earnest face and puffing with pride. As we drink wine only five or six times a year, even two small glasses of the revoltingly sweet stuff have an exhilarating effect; so there was a horra in the Square with Mendl doing his Pied Piper act and the new ones getting quite out of hand; the Egyptian dancing like a dervish, and the Dr. Phil. falling over his feet and breaking his glasses and generally making a fool of himself. The youth-group for a while looked on critically at us rapturous elders and then started a horra of their own among their tents, yelling and arse-slapping like a horde of Tarzans in the jungle.

Round midnight some of us had drifted into the kitchen for the traditional “cumsitz” with coffee and biscuits. There was the usual crowd—Reuben, Moshe, Max, Dina, Dasha and myself. I turned on the midnight news on the radio in the dining-hall, but of course there was nothing. I knew it would only lead to one of our usual sterile arguments but I couldn't keep quiet, so I started by asking the cumsitz-assembly what they thought should be done about the situation.

There was a hush of resentment, and at once I felt guilty for disturbing the celebration—we don't have so many of them. Then Reuben said cautiously:

“The Partition proposal was a scandal—but after all they have turned it down.”

“Don't you see,” I said, “that the fact alone of the publication of such a monstrosity is characteristic of their approach to the whole problem? One per cent of the country—think of it! It indicates the lines along which they search for what they call a ‘reasonable compromise'. First they publish an insult with the comment that unfortunately for technical reasons it cannot be carried out; then they invite the representatives of the Moslem countries to decide upon our fate—having plainly hinted to them what the Government itself thinks should be done with us.”

“Oh—you exaggerate as usual,” said Dasha.

“Joseph's got under the influence of the Bauman-people,” said Max. “He wants to throw bombs first on the Arabs, then on the English.”

“Oh shut up,” said Dina. “Bauman is no fool.” When Dina talks about politics, her eyes assume the gravity of a child wondering whether it should eat its chocolates now or later.

“No fool?” cried Max. “When he's throwing in his lot with Jabotinski and his fascist terrorists?”

“Look, Max,” I said. “Can't we keep internal party politics out of it?”

“No,” said Reuben quietly, “you can't. These people are
fighting our Trade Unions and Labour Party tooth and claw. They have not created a single settlement of their own. They have split the
Haganah
, our defence organisation. They have no constructive achievements and nothing in their heads but shouting and playing at soldiers.”

“In other words they are fascists. Hebrew fascists,” said Max.

“You can't call Bauman a fascist,” said Dina.

“Why not?” cried Dasha. “They throw bombs into Arab markets, killing women and children.”

“They turn the heads of young fools like Benjosef,” said Max, “inducing them to commit some idiotic outrage and get hanged for it. And Benjosef's accomplice was a lunatic whom they had to send to an asylum. That's symbolic. Fanatics and lunatics, the lot of them.”

And so it went on, I was all the more furious because I knew that half of what they said was true. I let myself go and turned on Max.

“That fool Benjosef,” I shouted, “was the first Hebrew hanged in this country since Bar Kochba's last stand against the Romans. You talk as if you hated that boy, who after all died for our cause, more than those who put the rope round his neck. God damn your objectivity. A race which remains objective when its life is at stake will lose it.”

They were all silent for a second or two, but my anger didn't subside. Oh, what a relief it was to forsake objectivity and close my eyes to their point, to all the “buts” and “ifs” which I see as well and better than they do. And letting myself go I carried them—at least for a minute.

“Now, Joseph,” said Ellen with all the seriousness of a responsible veg-gardener in a socialist rural settlement, “now, Joseph, let's be reasonable….”

“But I don't want to be reasonable,” I shouted. “I have had enough of being reasonable for two thousand years while the others were not. I was the reasonable fly running in zigzags over the window-pane because there was light on the other
side and I had my legs torn out and my wings burnt off with matches. I am through with your reasonableness.”

“So what do you propose to do?” Reuben asked coolly. Despite his calm voice I heard the warning undertone.

“I don't know,” I said, feeling my rage change into impotence. “I only know that we have been offered one per cent of our country as a reasonable compromise. And I know that on that first night here when we were attacked in the open and could shoot back with a clean conscience and the blessing of God, I felt happy to kill….”

“There you hear it—you hear the voice of fascism,” cried Max in a high-pitched voice almost breaking into a crow.

“And you?” Dina asked suddenly, leaning across the table and breathing into Max's face. “And you, clever one? What do you propose to do? Sing ‘The Red Flag', clever one?”

Max flinched back as if her breath had singed his face. It occurred to me that Dina, made impotent for love, had, perhaps alone among us, retained the chastity of hatred. Max must have felt something similar, for he grew pale in the furrows round his nose.

“If you still have the sense to listen,” he said with surprising restraint, “I can tell you my idea of what to do. We have to win over the Arabs, whether you like it or not. You can call me any name you like and play anthems into my ear and dangle banners under my nose, you won't deter me from my creed. Proletarians of the world, the poor and humble of this world, unite. This is as sacred to me as the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. The Arabs are the poor and humble and we are the poor and humble. There is no other way. This is my creed and I won't sell my creed for a mess of chauvinist pottage….”

His big tapir-nose quivered, and his eyes with the constantly inflamed lids quivered too. I liked and hated him in the same breath. So I said:

“You should not have brought in that mess of pottage. It's a tricky parable—a boomerang.”

“What do you mean?” said Max, blinking.

“Our ancestor, name of Jacob, got his blessing and the Land with it by cunning and crook. It's a disgusting story. He swindled the guileless Esau; he helped himself, so God helped him too. Had he been more scrupulous in the choice of his method, we wouldn't have got the Land—it would have fallen to the fur-skinned hunter of the deserts….”

“Oh shut up,” said Max.

“
You
shut up,” I shouted. “You with your world-redeeming pacifist phrases. What if the Arabs won't be redeemed by you? They don't want your money, nor your hospitals, nor your Trade Unions.”

“It's only the influence of the Effendis—the landowners and the priests,” said Max. “They are frightened of losing their privileges. But once the people understand that we are coming as their real friends …”

“Once,” said Dina. “Once, you clever one. Are you going to wait outside for that once? How long, clever one? How long are you going to wait, a hundred years or a thousand, tell me?”

“Nobody talks of waiting,” said Max, who was visibly frightened of Dina. “I never said that. I only said that we have to meet them half-way in a spirit of goodwill and understanding.”

“But they don't
want
to meet you, you blind idiot,” I shouted. “They hate you because you are a stranger and because the priests told them to hate you and because they believe the priests and are illiterate and live in the thirteenth century and haven't read your Marx. So what do you do? You talk of goodwill and understanding, but in fact you elbow your way in, whether they like it or not. That's what you do, you bloody hypocrite.”

“I can't argue if you yell at the top of your voice,” said Max.

“Why don't you shout back?” said Dina. “Why don't you shout, clever one? It's because you don't shout that you will always be the loser.”'

“Really,” said Reuben. “This is a bit unfair. A shouting match of two against one….”

“Damn your fairness and your ideologies and all your Jewish bla-bla-bla,” I said.

“That's a new one.” said Ellen. “Joseph has become an antisemite.”

At that moment the steam-roller got at last into action. “This is not a discussion but a spiral nebula,” puffed Moshe. “It is heated, vaporous, and has no beginning and no end. If I understood rightly Joseph has just discovered that the Government of Mr. Chamberlain would like to get rid of us. We know that. We also know that they can't. We have become too strong. We are no longer a promise on a piece of paper, but half a million men, one third of the country's population and more than two thirds of its economy. They let us down when the Arabs started shooting. We have shot it out with the Arabs and have proved that we are a match for them. We know our strength and have no need to get hysterical. We have built up what we have acre by acre and cow by cow. I for one know what my job is: to buy another acre and another cow. Good night.”

Thus things were patched up—for the time being at least—and as there was no point in going on with the argument we all went to bed.

Shabbath

The early rains have started in earnest, and with them the second worst torture after the heat:
botz
, the mud. Next year, if we have the money, we shall build concrete pathways across the settlement; this winter we shall still have to live as marsh-dwellers.